


Let Me Be Not Mad

by chaletian



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-12-16 03:58:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/857514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaletian/pseuds/chaletian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thought is staggeringly welcome: the ability to line up questions and ideas and answers and work through them one by one; order and reason instead of the boiling maelstrom of chaos, the carnival of monsters he had grown too used to. Will recognises that his internal rhetoric has developed a baroque flavour; he shies away from this thought, then returns, and slips the thought into its place in line. All evidence has its place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Me Be Not Mad

It’s only now, after steroids and antibiotics and a gunshot and admission to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane (thanks, Jack), that Will can be quiet and still and breathe and _think_.

(Thought is staggeringly welcome: the ability to line up questions and ideas and answers and work through them one by one; order and reason instead of the boiling maelstrom of chaos, the carnival of monsters he had grown too used to. Will recognises that his internal rhetoric has developed a baroque flavour; he shies away from this thought, then returns, and slips the thought into its place in line. All evidence has its place.)

He is stable.

That is the first thing Will is able to catalogue about himself. His head is clear. His sense of self is solid. It always has been; it’s the only way he’s been able to survive his gift of peering into others, and he wonders, a little wryly, how Jack Crawford has imagined Will growing into an even semi-functional adult all this time. The copycat killer – no, there isn’t the luxury of hiding behind epithets, not now – _Dr Lecter_ made the mistake of believing in the notion of Jack and his broken profiler. Will might have believed he killed Abigail – might _still_ believe it, even now – but not the others. He knew then and he knows now that he did not kill them, and logic dictates that he did not kill Abigail.

Plus, of course, Lecter had confessed (as good as). So, there’s that.

The second thing Will is able to catalogue about himself is this: he is fucked.  Right here, locked in a cell with a conscious clarity that has been absent for weeks, Will can see exactly how royally fucked he is. Lecter has been so, so clever and Will has been painfully oblivious to their combined trajectory. Lecter hasn’t just trapped him; he has toyed with the very fabric of Will’s reality and unravelling the threads of truth from the stuff of illusion and delusion is going to take time. Which, somewhat conveniently, Will has right now.

He’d very much like to pretend that _of course_ no-one will believe that he is truly a serial killer. He’d like to believe that the people he has worked with – his colleagues – his _friends_ , even – will think about him, Will Graham, sitting in his home spinning lures out of human hair and gristle, and will reject the concept. This is a fantasy. They are professionals. He was physiologically and psychologically disturbed and there is a near insurmountable pile of evidence that points directly at him. He has been arrested and processed and charged (and escaped and shot and recaptured), and he cannot rely on anyone to come to his rescue.

But here’s the third thing Will can catalogue about himself. He may not be entirely normal, he may not interact with other people quite within the prescribed bounds of society, he may, at this precise moment, be getting over a brain disease and an extremely uncomfortable degree of psychological manipulation, but none of that makes him stupid or incompetent. He is a trained investigator. He is an experienced homicide detective. He is a gifted profiler. These things, Will Graham knows about himself. And he will be damned if he doesn’t make the most of them to bring down Hannibal Lecter.

Later, he thinks about _honouring all of her_ and Lecter’s dinner parties, and vomits into the toilet. He dreams of an ever-unsatiated monster stalking the woods and wakes, shaking. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

But it was built.

**Author's Note:**

> Watching this series, I was so struck by how poor old Will is beset by his sea of troubles, yet continues to battle away, still trying to function, still trying to get the job done, with a focus that is pretty impressive given the fact that HIS BRAIN WAS ON FIRE. And - possible vague spoiler alert; be warned! - I liked how Bryan Fuller said that in season 2, we would see Will hit rock bottom and come out swinging. I find his doggedness (heh lol) a really important part of his character; I think it's what's allowed him to get this far and will lead him ~~TO INFINITY AND BEYOND~~ to victory.


End file.
